The driver of the bus that killed five persons, including filmmaker Tareque Masud and media personality Ashfaque Munier Mishuk, in Manikganj on Saturday was arrested yesterday from Gangni upazila of Meherpur.

The parliamentary body on communications ministry has long been criticising Minister Syed Abul Hossain for his poor performance and indifference to repairing roads and highways, but the minister did not pay heed to that.

The communications ministry has recently claimed that it could not repair roads and highways due to fund crunch, while it failed to spend timely the money allocated for two major donor-funded road development projects.

Dilapidated road condition, badly managed intersections, disrespect to traffic rules and overwhelming number of vehicles have not only turned the country's highways extremely dangerous but also increased travel time between the capital and the rest of the country.

The government has moved to ease the ongoing road transport crisis through operating 30 BRTC buses on two strike-hit routes yesterday as the private bus owners continued their strike for the fourth day.

Two advisers to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will reach New Delhi today to hold talks with officials for fine tuning the key agreements to be singed during the visit of her Indian counterpart to Dhaka next month.

A relentless barrage of bombings killed 63 people yesterday in the most sweeping and coordinated attack Iraq has seen in over a year, striking 17 cities from northern Sunni areas to the southern Shiite heartland.

Surgeons have fixed the fractured jaw and realigned the displaced teeth of painter Dhali Al Mamun, one of the survivors of Saturday's car crash that killed five including Tareque Masud and Ashfaque Munier Mishuk.

Editorial

Saturday's road collision on the Dhaka-Aricha highway which killed five, among them, renowned filmmaker Tareque Masud and noted broadcast journalist, Mishuk Munier, has caused public outcry, including a demand for the resignation of the Communications Minister. The minister, however, has shifted the blame to the limited budgetary allocations to roads and highways and to the failure of the previous government in this regard.

There must be something seriously wrong with the system when those that we turn to for safety and help themselves resort to robbing and mugging. News reports, of two incidents in recent times regarding cops snatching money from the public, speak volumes of the degeneracy of the law enforcing agency.

Sports

Bangladesh are currently engaged in a 5-match ODI series in Zimbabwe, and are trailing 2-0. There are three matches to go starting with today's 3rd ODI, so there is an outside chance of the Tigers bouncing back. But for Bangladesh cricket fans it may actually be wiser to support Zimbabwe today.

An International Cricket Council official has confirmed to the Bangladesh team management that one person who is in the ICC's list of suspected bookies has gone missing from Harare after it was reported in India that four people in connection with betting on the Bangladesh-Zimbabwe first ODI were arrested in New Delhi on Sunday.

The latest tug of war between the CCDM and the NSC over the renovation of dressing rooms at the Bangabandhu National Stadium ahead of the Argentina-Nigeria friendly has once again brought forward the age-old question; who owns the iconic national sports venue and, no less importantly, what should be the purpose of this stadium?

Serena Williams won the WTA Rogers Cup title Sunday, beating Samantha Stosur 6-4, 6-2 to hammer home her credentials as a US Open favourite when the last Grand Slam event of the season starts in two weeks' time.

Novak Djokovic says a small shoulder niggle which bothered him en route to a 6-2, 3-6, 6-4 defeat of Mardy Fish to win the Montreal Masters won't be a problem in next week's final tune-up before the US Open.

Saiful Bari Titu is all set to take charge of Bangladesh League champions Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi Club for the next season and the contract is expected to be done today after the final meeting with club president Manjur Kader.

Business

The European Union may remove its obligatory rule to test 20 percent of frozen fish consignments from Bangladesh, raising hopes for hurdle-free shipments to a major export destination, said officials and exporters yesterday.

Around 15,000 factories -- from giant denim to spinning mills, readymade garments, ceramics, tiles, glass and pharmaceutical plants -- all are facing serious problems with carrying raw materials and getting the finished goods out due to the battered condition of the Dhaka-Mymensingh road networks.

Google Inc said it will buy phone hardware maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc for $12.5 billion in cash to bolster the adoption of its Android mobile software. Following are instant reactions from market analysts:

There is some misconception about the 3G (third generation) mobile technology in Bangladesh. People think that it is a luxury product and it has the capacity to change the people's live overnight, which is wrong. The policymakers as well as the media are also presenting the technology in the same way, said a telecom analyst.

As Germany emerged from the destruction of World War II, it rebuilt its economy on a system of strong rules governing virtually every aspect of business, from auto manufacturing to competition among regional newspapers.

Two rival factions of Chittagong city Awami League (AL) yesterday observed National Mourning Day separately one led by City president ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury and another by Primary and Mass Education Minister Afsarul Ameen.

The Non-government Teachers Registration and Certification Authority (NTRCA) has extended the time for submission of application for the 7th non-government teacher registration examinations by nine days.

Rizia Kashem, mother of daily Amar Desh Staff Reporter Mahmuda Dolly, passed away due to a cardiac arrest at her residence in Dhamura village under Uzirpur upazila of Barisal on Sunday night at the age of 58.

A section of 'general students' in Pabna University of Science and Technology (PUST) have boycotted the authorities' weeklong programmes marking the National Mourning Day, in protest against a 'pro-Islami Chhatra Shibir' official's selection as secretary of the 'mourning day observation committee' at PUST.

The authorities of Islamic University in Kushtia asked its students to vacate their dormitories by yesterday afternoon following clashes between Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) and Islami Chhatra Shibir activists that left 25 students injured.

A boy was electrocuted in Lenguria area in the town yesterday. The deceased was identified as Hasan, 12, son of Bais Uddin. Witnesses said Hasan came in contact with a snapped electric wire of a hatchery on the bank of a canal at noon. He was taken to a local hospital where he died soon after admission.

Members of the Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) seized firearms and sharp weapons from Badurgacha village under Amtali upazila of Barguna district at yesterday. They arrested a man named Md. Zakir Hossen, 35, of the village. When a Rab patrol team challenged three men crossing the area riding a motorbike at around 9:00am, two of them managed to flee. The elite force then arrested Zakir and recovered one 7.65mm pistol, one LG, four bullets, one Chinese axe, two billhooks, three knives and one machete from the spot.

Law enforcers recovered the bodies of two youths from Kalkini upazila in Madaripur district yesterday morning. The dead were later identified as Sumon Sardar, 22, son of Akkel Sardar, and Rahim Hawladar, 25, son of Nazrul Hawladar of Chenguria village in Agailjhara upazila of Barisal. Locals found the bodies beside the road at Uttar Khil village in Dashar Union of the Kalkini upazila at around 7:00 am and informed the police who recovered the bodies at around 9:00am and sent them Madaripur Sadar Hospital for autopsy. Police said the bodies bore several injury marks.

A thee-year old child drowned in a pond at Bandakati village in Kaliganj upazila yesterday morning. The victim was identified as Firoj, son of Md Hazrat Ali. Police quoted local people as saying that Firoj was playing on the bank of the pond near their house. Suddenly, he slipped into the pond and drowned. Local people found the body floating in the pond and recovered it at around 1:00pm.

Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) personnel seized 1,102 pieces of Indian saris at Samta village in Sharsha upazila on Sunday night. Acting on a tip-off, BGB men conducted a drive at the village at around 11:00pm and recovered the saris worth about Tk 12 lakh from there. Later, the border guards deposited the seized saris to Benapole Customs House.

International

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh yesterday said corruption was a deep concern for all and needs simultaneous action on many fronts but asked leading social activist Anna Hazare not to go on hunger strike from today on the issue of graft.

British Prime Minister David Cameron announced yesterday a sweeping review of government policy to reverse a "slow-motion moral collapse" that he blames for last week's riots in which five people died.

Syrian forces shelled residential districts in Latakia yesterday, residents said, the third day of an assault on Sunni neighborhoods of the ancient port city which had seen mounting protests against President Bashar al-Assad's autocratic rule.

Arts & Entertainment

I had first met director Tareque Masud in 1995 at a screening of his famed documentary “Muktir Gaan” (The Song of Freedom) in Dhaka where I was posted as a journalist and I have since then retained the image of his as a young man bubbling with energy and passion for filmmaking.

Dr. Mridul Kanti Chakrobarty -- noted singer, instrumentalist, writer, researcher, music critic and Professor at the department of Music, Dhaka University -- died yesterday at Labaid Cardiac Hospital in the capital. He was 56. Dr. Chakrobarty was severely dehydrated. Yesterday morning at around 10, when dehydration caused heart attack, he was rushed from his Fuller Road residence to the hospital where he succumbed to death after an hour.

Alfred Hitchcock was born 112 years ago on August 13 in Leytonstone, London. His father would have him locked in the local jail for ten-minute stretches as punishment for minor misbehaviour. His mother would make him stand at the foot of her bed and recount his sins for hours. It's no wonder he became the master of the psychological thriller; what's incredible is how incredibly funny -- nervously, darkly funny, but still funny -- his films are, too.

Bangla Theatre brought to the stage a new monodrama highlighting core aspects of the writings of two creative titans -- Rabindranath Tagore and William Shakespeare. The play, titled “The Distant Near”, has been written by Shahidul Mamun, and directed, designed by Faiz Zahir. Veteran thespian Mamunur Rashid enacted several characters in the play including Tagore, Shakespeare and major characters created by both the bards.

When the news that Tareque Masud along with Mishuk Munier and others met with a tragic accident on the Dhaka-Aricha highway broke out, people of Manikganj where Masud's next film “Kagojer Phool” was to be shot were left dumbfounded. They only had words of praise for Tareque Masud and his team.

Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts is hosting a weeklong painting exhibition titled, “Ecological Agonies: Tribute to Rabindranath Tagore”, featuring the works of Indian artist Dipali Saha at the gallery in Dhanmondi, Dhaka.

DS Café will have TV and film actor Chanchal Chowdhury take your calls today. Readers will have the opportunity to converse with him on different issues regarding his acting, singing and vision as a theatre activist. Call 8126155 today, between 12 and 1 pm, to speak to Chanchal Chowdhury!!!

OP-ED

We would talk volubly about road accidents and deaths, only after they have come about. It is an exasperating ritual we are deeply involved in. Following every accidental death the onrush of commiseration stuffed with age-old phrases has become a pattern. To some, soft words of sympathy now sound like expletives. We promise a thorough query and exemplary punishment to the killer drivers, which we invariably renege on.

We lost the central hinge of the plot on August, 15, 1947. We thought that raising the tricolour over Edwina and Lord Louis Mountbatten's palace marked the end of the freedom project launched by Mahatma Gandhi in 1919. It was only the beginning of a second and equally difficult freedom struggle. The first had been against the British. The second Indian freedom struggle would be against fellow Indians.

The weeklong London riots have been a blow to Britain's proud self-image as a "haven of stability," so said John Burns in his Friday's article in the New York Times. But the riot in question was also not the first of its kind in England. The one in 1985, for instance, took place at the same flashpoint of Tottenham in North London. However, the spread and the scale of devastation caused by rioters this time has been far greater than those of any other time since World War II. In either case, it was the death of a resident during police raid in the area that sparked the violence.

Four decades after our independence and thirty six years of his death, what does Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman mean to our one hundred and fifty million people? He is our best ever politician. He is the selfless leader who fought his whole life for an independent country for his Bangalee brothers and sisters. He achieved his goal although he had to leave tragically a few years later. His people love and respect him beyond description. He loved them to a fault and they love him in return. As long as the Padma and the Meghna will flow, Bangabandhu will be fondly remembered by his people.

In a society where few acts are selfish and no commitment is final, where sacrifice is neither unheard of nor expected and loyalty is mostly partisan, Brig. Gen. Jamil (Bir Uttam) is one of the most unusual persons of all. He drove down to certain death because duty called and once and for all established the ultimate example of courage and sacrifice. It would be very hard indeed to find another like him in our history.

ONE of the accomplishments of the Persian mathematician Omar Khayyam was to give geometrical constructions for the roots of a cubic as the intersections of two conics. Of course, this approach had been used earlier by Menaechmus and others to solve certain special cubic's, especially in relation to the problem of "duplicating the cube”. But Khayyam generalized it to cover essentially all cubics. Although with many individual cases so as to avoid negative numbers). It's usually said that Khayyam erroneously believed the cubic could not be solved algebraically, but I think we need to be careful about assuming that Khayyam was referring to the modern idea of what constitutes an "algebraic" solution. One of his most famous quotes is

WITHIN 14 years of a national marine park in Mexico's Gulf of California closing its borders to fishing, the total mass of its denizens more than quintupled, a new study finds. Over the same period, the share of top predators sentinels of a healthy ecosystem also soared. Both trends countered those for fish in unprotected regions of the Gulf.

ONE of the biggest underground markets on the planet nutrient trading between plant roots and fungi turns out to run on a system of reciprocal rewards for good suppliers and less business for bad ones.

ASTRONOMERS have discovered the darkest known exoplanet -- a distant, Jupiter-sized gas giant known as TrES-2b. Their measurements show that TrES-2b reflects less than one percent of the sunlight falling on it, making it blacker than coal or any planet or moon in our solar system.

It is architecture in another form, the creation of living and working spaces which are a harmonious blend of technology, multimedia, intelligent systems and user interactivity. These spaces can be customized and the residents can claim to be the world's most connected community. Cybertecture even allows a person to select preferred background music. One such cyberstructure is coming up on an area of 32,000 square metres in Mumbai called the Cybertecture Egg. It will have 13 floors of offices, and include a feature to monitor occupants' health, besides virtual scenery which can be changed.